Stealing Glimpses
by notnow
Summary: Oneshots. Moments of Yoh, Anna, Hao. Some random, some poignant, some pointless. Of love, parting, first times...together these fragments will form a whole.
1. Shedding Inhibitions

They slip off when no one watches. She lets him lead her by the hand. The scenery seems to glide by as they walk.

He will be leaving to fight soon, in a few days. His return is uncertain and the outcome unclear. But they will put that aside for now. Right now they will just have faith.

And fall into the moment.

She studies his backside. Dark chocolate hair. White linen shirt on tanned skin. Slender shoulders giving way to broadness. Hadn't she noticed when he began to change?

_She is fifteen. He is nearly sixteen. Somehow they are ready. _

His hands shake when he goes to open the door. It seems like an eternity before it is ajar. She follows him into the room. They do not look at each other for awhile, but stare at the futon in front of them instead. It is white and has four rounded corners. It seems so foreign somehow.

Her fingers tremble when she reaches for his hand again. It is clammy and warm. He takes the first step towards the futon. She hesitates before following again.

_It is hard to say how things came to be. After all, it was not planned. _

He looks into her eyes, asking her one last time without using words. Is she sure? She nods her head slowly, but with conviction. They fumble over buttons and zippers; their fingers are clumsy with inexperience.

An overload of sensory floods their bodies. Their hearts pumps so loudly, threatening to leap out of their chests. Every single pulse is racing and throbbing. The colors around them start to blend, the world starts to spin, and they realize they must not be getting enough air. They stop what they are doing and put their heads together, their foreheads touching. They wait for their erratic breathing to level out a little.

Then they proceed again, continuing to peel off each layer of clothing, and finally removing the last barrier between their aching bodies.

When his hands touch the side of her breasts, she freezes. He is also stunned momentarily by her reaction, before whispering between shallow breaths, "Anna? Stop?" She shakes her head, and fervidly kisses the side of his neck, urging him to continue.

Her hair smells different to him, spicy and sweet at the same time. He is surprised, having thought he had memorized everything about her. But then he remembers who they are. He is Yoh and she is Anna. Her façade is cast aside and his head has come down from the clouds. He gives her a relaxed smile, the one that she has come to know so well. She grins back. Suddenly their hands steady and their breathing become natural as their nervousness subsides. Dark irises meet one another and the sounds of the world fade away. A sort of quietness sinks in, like being submerged in deep water. Just him. Just her. No one else.

Her kisses are firm and passionate, fueling desires that had lay dormant inside of his adolescent body. They devour each other with an appetite that is insatiable. Their thirst to be together is unquenchable.

He steps out of being a boy. She steps out of being a girl. Together they are man and woman.

They'll accept whatever consequences that will come afterwards. But for now, they'll drift with the moment.

* * *

August 19, 2005---I had imagined it differently than what I wrote. But this will do for now. 


	2. The Implications of Merging

At first she didn't recognize the ache that was in her heart. She cried inwardly. The tears came later. She cried because he came back, and yet he didn't.

The person who stood before her came back a different person than the one who left. She had already prepared for this, yet no preparation was ever enough. Her unshakable faith was now wavering.

She met his gentle smile with quivering lips. Her eyes burned with distress.

"Who are you? Which one are you?" she managed between sobs. Gone were the stern demeanor, the hard plated exterior, and the emotionless guise of a face; the hormones of early motherhood had taken over.

He placed his hands on the evident rise of her belly, a belly molded by four months of pregnancy. She wanted to recoil but her surging emotions had paralyzed everything in her body, save for the conditioned responses to convulse and cry.

His touch was tender and his eyes looked probingly into hers. But she wasn't familiar with the wise years in his eyes. They have leaped in age from sixteen years of boyhood to two lifetimes of pain and the hundreds of years in between.

"I am who I should be, Anna."

"No," she mumbled softly as she backed away.

"And I still love you wholeheartedly." At those words, her sobbing reprieved. She slowly stepped back to him, glancing once more at his face, stroking his hair and his cheeks. He smiled as he let her examine him. She relaxed when she saw that his compassion was still and truly there. She could ignore the new length in his mahogany locks. And she could ignore the erect, authoritative posture that has replaced his usual willowy slouch.

"So you are Yoh?" she pleaded.

"I am still Yoh." But there was a break in his sentence. Gently, he resumed, "but I am also him." When he saw that she was trembling and drawing back once again, he added hastily, "There is no lie in saying I love you wholeheartedly, because both halves always did."

And when she felt that those words could be true, she realized that perhaps she could get used to things.

* * *

August 19, 2005----I always wanted to see what happened in between the last chapters of the manga and the Funbari No Uta installments. Here's one way I imagined it. In another variation, I think Anna's façade would still be in place, so she'd be a lot calmer.

Jgirl79-- I always found your words so encouraging. Really, thank you! _Wipes tears from eyes. _Although I don't usually respond to reviews directly, I want you to know that I read every single one of them and always keep them in my consideration when I write.


	3. Love by Default

3. Love by Default

* * *

It's been mistaken for being one-sided. And now it can be misinterpreted as love by default. 

The florescent orange headphones—music's obsolete tool, long left behind by rapidly advancing technology—rest next to his miles of mahogany locks. She watches him rustle a bit against his pillow, his consciousness riding the waves of sleep.

Love by default was too simple of a phrase; it was undermining.

There are many facts to consider. For instance, her loving him had seeped in as realization long ago. She knew, but like all other emotions she felt, it was repressed. Truthfully, she is a very emotional person. And quite fortunately, she is good at hiding it.

Her love for him was the one she wanted kept hidden. Her love for Yoh was the one she proudly upheld.

First, her feelings started out as mere annoyance. He had been the only one to stop her mid slap. Luckily, the left hand still connected with his cheek. She couldn't let his fire smother her own.

Then the annoyance grew into utter disdain, something that hinted a little bit of something else. Attraction.

So she brushed it off as shallow attraction, the meaningless kind that only she need know about.

On their second meeting, face to face, his fingers clamped roughly around her wrists and his menacing tone demanded to know who she was. Then, the trickling of her feelings had turned into an onslaught of undeniable truth. It didn't make sense; it jolted her. The idea of simultaneously loving two people was truly repulsive.

Standing on the sandy seashore behind his casually seated figure that day, the clarity began to make the illogical more logical. She loved him because she loved Yoh, and Yoh was half of him to begin with.

She loved them as separate entities. And she loved them as one whole being.

She draws the fallen covers back over her husband's shivering body.

Now she can also accept that she loved Yoh because Yoh was half of Hao to begin with.

* * *

_AN: This is just based on my own epiphany; it's a different interpretation than chap 2. It's debatable, but I really think Anna would have loved the original Hao. Her loving Yoh shows one aspect of her loving Hao, because I really think Yoh's current personality was a part of him that became repressed by his hatred for humans. _


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